Mater. Mater of mother and also of mother earth. The popular Casa Museu de la Plaça de l’Oli (which has nothing of a house) is an old palace from the 13th century, with its walls and vaults and iron columns, which will open its doors on July 1 and will become the last museum attraction in a Barcelona that is greening up with more and better culture. A new neighbor arrives (the address is carrer de l’Oli, 4 or Mercaders, 15) who promises joy and a unique and original vision to the already densely populated and increasingly comfortable artistic nest that expands with a first show on local artists including Miralda and Barceló. Mater completes a map that stretches from Trafalgar and its surroundings, with its range of classic and avant-garde galleries, to the riverside that bathes photographic spaces, such as the Fundació Colectania and the KBr of the Fundació Mapfre. At the heart of this whole body, the Picasso, the Moco, the Museum of World Cultures and a long et cetera pumping energy and beauty.
The architect Valentina Asinari di San Marzano and her daughter Taifa are behind this house-museum project that will open to the public in July with an exhibition entitled Ultralocal: and which stars artists who work or worked in this area where partly the great countercultural and artistic movement of Barcelona in the 1970s was forged. “It’s not about zero kilometer art, but zero meter”, Asinari smiled proudly yesterday in a conversation with La Vanguardia, a few days before realizing a dream that has been shaping for years and is surrounded by history. Asinari di San Marzano, accompanied by her daughter Taifa, and the curator Alexia Sinoble, talk and reminisce surrounded by the works that are already conquering the respective rooms, each from a different century.
The project was conceived many years ago, when this trained architect, who worked for Óscar Tusquets or Enric Miralles, gave birth to her daughter. His mother told him to find a place, a shelter to live and dream. “In 1997, it turned out that the member of the Cercle Artístic de Barcelona Joan Abelló had the keys to the house and showed it to me. It was a place that accumulated 700 years of history. Elionor of Aragon, cousin of Pere the Ceremonious, had lived there,” recalls Asinari ma, who bought it and began a long and meticulous restoration process. The house museum is also decorated with more domestic and earthly episodes, those that took place in the old inn Hostal Girona, where the bandit Joan de Serrallonga (1594-1634) is said to have taken refuge. It was in his honor that the gallery of the same name opened in 1976 with an exhibition by Josep Tharrats. “Behind the project there is a long investigation into the Barcelona of the seventies”, remarks curator Alexia Sinoble. During the conversation, names come up such as those of the writers Quim Monzó and Pedro Zarraluki, the illustrators Nazario, Perico Pastor and Mariscal, the magazines Ajoblanco and Makoki, the Zeleste room… and the names of anonymous neighbors who stood up with the dictatorship still simmering.
“It’s funny, because we are nobody”, points out Taifa Asinari. “We are not collectors – clarifies the mother – but the artists have trusted us”. Robert Llimós has been a key figure in attracting creators (many of his friends) to the project. The exhibition will include works by… Here is the multigenerational line-up: Francesc Artigau, Marcos Palazzi, Serra de Rivera, Mireya Masó, Francesca Llopis, Maïs Jorba, Rosa Amorós, Sergi Aguilar, Kima Guitart, Ocaña, the great photographer Leopold Samsó, Francesco Volsi, Miquel Barceló or Antoni Miralda.
